Of Cinnamon and Firewhiskey
by astral symphony
Summary: ONESHOT J/L. "Peppermint or cinnamon?" "Peppermint! Not even a question. No comparison. No one in their right mind prefers cinnamon!" "I'll have you know it's my favorite."


**disclaimer**: everything you recognize belongs to the incredible jk rowling, to who i owe my childhood and my obsession.

**a/n**: i haven't written in ages, let alone fanfiction. but i daresay i rather enjoy this one, at the moment. who knows how i'll feel in an hour. regardless, enjoy! this is just an idea that came to me while i was bored at work one day.

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><p>"Favorite color," she demanded cooly.<p>

"Green."

"Ha! Mine is red. See? Opposite sides of the spectrum."And with that, Lily Evans leaned back in her chair, satisfied. The grin on her face was one of a victor after a long, grueling duel. Which, frankly, was more-or-less what their friendship was akin to. Sure, the seventeen-year-old wizards were able to stand each other's company, even find pleasure and enjoyment by being around one another, but everything remained a pseudo-challenge. Old habits do die hard, after all.

They had been engaged in a round of compare-and-contrast for the better part of twenty minutes. It began when she scrunched her nose at his purchase of dark chocolate-filled toffees, much preferring a classic milk chocolate. He insisted that she just didn't like it because he did; Lily countered that she had always favored milk to dark and kindly (in a matter of speaking) insisted that he stop trying to relate everything back to him. The boy appeared not to have heard the second part of her words, for in response he had simply said: "Dogs or cats?" He answered the latter and she the former, to which he smirked.

"Peppermint or cinnamon?" had been her retort, and he had guffawed slightly, not hesitating to answer.

"Peppermint! Not even a question. No comparison. No one in their right mind prefers _cinnamon_," he said the word with slight disgust and she even swore he shuddered faintly.

"I'll have you know it's my favorite."

His grin had increased, and she rolled her eyes. "Peanut butter or jelly?"

"Jelly."

"I like peanut butter. See, we're perfect for each other." He paused. "As friends, naturally." With a disinterested motion, he leaned back in his seat, his arm and hand dangling as he lackadaisically laid it over the arm of the chair.

"False," she had said, leaning forward as if she had a deeply interesting secret to share. "I'm allergic to peanuts, Potter. Your preferences could kill me." She had smirked at this, leaning back into her seat and brushing hair from her eyes in a casual, relaxed motion. He felt his breath catch in his throat for a moment, a familiar jolt tugging at his stomach as it flip-flopped ever so slightly.

Which brought them to the question currently in discussion: color choice.

"Maybe we are," James Potter answered slowly, "Opposites, I mean." It was his turn to lean forward, his own chair directly across from hers, separated by a antique-looking coffee table upon which sat wrinkled pieces of parchment, spare quills, jars of ink, and sweets wrappers. He looked nonplussed, a grin creasing one corner of his mouth, an eyebrow quirked upwards, fading behind the unruly hair covering his forehead. "However, I think you are overlooking the fact that red and green, orange and blue, yellow and purple. They're all called _complementary_ colors. Not _opposites-we-hate-each-other_ colors."

She let out a sharp laugh, reaching forward to the coffee table for a piece of toffee. He surveyed her movement carefully, worried for a moment that she might attempt to hex him or else inflict some sort of pain to him. He smiled, though, watching her unwrap the candy with careful precision, flattening the wrapper and folding it up several times until it was a miniscule, perfectly-angled square.

"Complementary my ass," Lily retorted, chucking the silver now-square wrapper at him in a lighthearted gesture. He caught it in his hand.

James smiled in spite of himself. He felt slightly light-headed, dizzy almost, as he tended to when spending time with the red-haired girl in front of him. It seemed surreal, something out of an alternate universe. They were two months into their final year at Hogwarts and, after six years, Lily finally didn't hate him. Sure, he still wasn't dating her. They didn't share kisses or intimate moments and he didn't get to indulge in all his seventeen-year-old boy fantasies. But she didn't _hate_ him. In fact, he smiled at him and called him James (well, most of the time) and their fights were more-often-than-not about silly things like cinnamon and colors and peanut butter. She asked him about himself, his family, what it was like to grow up in a well-known wizarding family; he learned about her, her family, and the difference between a telephone and a toaster.

All this friendship stuff, however, required extra energy from James in order to maintain his resolve to not mess things up. Things that were finally going in a positive direction. He did not need that to come crashing down around him, especially now. After all, they were the Head Boy and Girl and had a lot of responsibilities to uphold – responsibilities that resulted in many late-night study sessions, for it seemed that they never got to their homework until well into the night. The Heads' Office, however, granted quiet from the noisy Gryffindor Common Room and they were able to focus (most of the time).

Sometimes, though, they would get easily sidetracked. Like now, for instance, as they argued good-naturedly about their preferences. It was not lost on James how often they were spending time together, away from their classmates. The Office was big enough and almost like its own little common room – well-furnished, a fireplace at one end, comfy and warm. Even recently, the witch herself would suggest they studied together, away from all the bustle. He never enjoyed studying quite so much before.

"You're brill at Potions," he commented, thoughts of complementary colors now aside.

"Yes," she drawled confidently, but her cheeks revealed her modesty as they flushed ever-so-faintly.

"I'm only okay at Potions."

"Trust me, I know that. I've been helping you out all year," Lily said with a laugh, but it wasn't derisive: his stomach flopped at the sound and the smile that accompanied it.

"And I've been helping you in Defense."

"Watch it!"

"It's not a bad thing," he said with a shrug. "I'm just pointing out that you prefer Potions, I prefer Defense. It's a very symbiotic relationship, Evans. Like I said, we complement one another."

She looked at him evenly, her face betraying no hint of her thoughts. He wasn't sure if he should prepare to apologize, and was already crafting an amendment to his statement (he knew he should have said friendship over relationship; words, Potter!) when she spoke. "What's your point?" she asked slowly. It wasn't angry or cruel or dismissive – but light and curious, her eyes bright as she searched him.

James didn't answer right away; he felt his resolve falter under her stare, so he reached for a dark chocolate-filled toffee for something to do. He felt her eyes still on him as he unwrapped it. "Just that, it's nice to know I'm friends with someone who I can give the cinnamon-flavored mints to when I buy the variety pack." Still not looking at her, he popped the toffee in his mouth and resumed his Charms homework.

xxx

"Butterbeer or Firewhiskey?" she asked a week later. Her feet were curled under her, fingers wrapped around a quill that was poised above the parchment.

"_No_ comparison, Evans. But if I had to choose, Firewhiskey."

"Butterbeer," Lily answered confidently, putting her quill down and grinning wryly. "But only because I've never had Firewhiskey."

"Wha—? Never had – oh, dear, oh dear, oh dear," he clucked. James looked at her, quite serious. She could have sworn his hazel eyes shone mischievously, though. "Lily Evans, this is, quite frankly, unacceptable. As a Marauder and Head Boy of this fine establishment, it is my civic duty to take action against this great offense," he reported solemnly. His lips twitched ever so slightly, that lopsided grin of his threatening to grace itself upon his face.

Oh, bugger.

She felt her stomach embark on the rollercoaster ride it had become a fan of lately. That damn grin of his got her every time. At first, she ignored the fluttering sensation that showed up whenever he looked at her a certain way, or she noticed a fleck of amber in his eyes, or he came in from Quidditch practice with his hair all a mess and his face gleaming from exhaustion and excitement. But she soon found that the feeling crept up whenever it bloody well felt like it: such as in the morning, when she was getting ready for the day, or when she smelled peppermint, or saw peanut butter, or was about to fall asleep at night. The most curious thing, however, was that she started to welcome the butterflies, the stampede of wild hippogriffs, the rollercoaster – whatever the hell it decided to be in that moment.

"It's excellent, Lily," he said in her silence. James rambled on. "It's hot and cold all at the same time, but in the end, it just warms you right up. It makes you lightheaded, but not in a bad way, because nothing can be bad, because everything is happier and sillier than usual. Which is _why_," he said, rising to his feet, "we are going to get you your first taste."

She looked puzzled. "It's Wednesday night, James," she said, ignoring the jolt of the rollercoaster as she said his name. "Hogsmeade isn't until Saturday."

James stared at her blankly. "Marauder," he said with the air of one explaining simple math to a child. "Stay here," he said as he quickly grabbed his backpack and slung it over his shoulder. "I will be back in approximately," he paused, looking at the nonexistent watch on his left wrist, "twelve minutes and fifty-six seconds."

Lily laughed, slightly beside herself. "You better hurry," she said. "And it better be good. You practically wrote a love poem to it!" she called after him. He raised a hand dismissively as he jet out the Heads' Office.

She stood up, pacing the Office in her friend's absence. What a strange thought, she realized: friend. And he was a pretty good one at that. He seemed genuinely concerned for her well-being, showed interest in _her_, not just her looks, and made her laugh. A lot. She would never admit it out loud, but she rather enjoyed having him around. Lately, she preferred their study sessions in this office over going to the library with Mary and Alice. Here, it was like there was an unspoken understanding of the pattern they had unwittingly developed. They would sit in the same chairs, use the same quills, and eat the same sweets each time. And it seemed that they had developed a sort of rhythm, only after James had exposed her to the importance of a little nonsensical chat break. After about a half hour to an hour's worth of homework, the silence would be broken by something completely unrelated to Transfiguration or Potions or History of Magic. It was never planned, and, to her surprise, she rather enjoyed that.

She would ask him often about his family and what it was like growing up with magic. She can't imagine having grown up knowing about all of the stuff she knew now; would these past six years have been less incredible, almost routine? She asked him one day if Hogwarts was boring, since it wasn't all new to him.

"No," he had said vehemently. "No, it's new all right."

"But you grew up _knowing_," she had said. "With me, it was the biggest shock of my life. It's still the biggest shock of my life. In fact, I'm not sure that anything can top being told 'Hey, you're a witch!' at eleven years old."

"You'd be surprised," he said simply and smiled before asking her to explain more about motorcycles.

Lily was impressed when James returned fifteen minutes later. "Not bad," she allowed, leaning against her desk in the corner of the room. "Only two minutes and four seconds late," she added after mimicking his earlier action of checking a watch.

He smirked. "It's not kind to leave a lady waiting longer than five minutes." Without further ado, the unruly-haired boy dropped his bag onto the vacant armchair and, after some digging around, withdrew a dark glass bottle with an tan-and-red label. The amber liquid inside glinted as it caught the light from the chandelier above and the dull fireplace in the far corner of the room. The color, she thought subconsciously, reminded her of his eyes sometimes. She smiled in spite of herself, not bothering to shove the thought away.

"I didn't get glasses," he was saying, "because I think it's a disservice to Ogden himself to drink it out of anything _but_ the bottle."

"How manly," she remarked, a smile still playing on her face.

Lily watched as he worked to unscrew the top, listening to the satisfying sound of the metal topper against glass. When he had successfully opened the bottle, he plopped himself on the ground with his back against his chair. She followed suit, leaning against the other armchair. He extended the bottle towards her.

"Ladies first."

With only a slight bit of hesitancy, she reached out and took the bottle. Her hand brushed against his awkwardly as she went to take the bottle; she was all too aware of the shock of shivers it sent through her veins and the dull roar of the Hungarian Horntail in the pit of her stomach. She wondered, briefly, if he felt it, too. Her eyes flickered to his for a quick moment, but James' face showed only anticipation and excitement. He smiled encouragingly at her, and without a second thought she brought the bottle to her lips.

xxx

His hand was still tingling where Lily touched it, albeit accidentally. He tried to put it out of his mind, the cool brush of her soft fingers on his as she grabbed the bottle. This was virtually impossible as he watched that same hand, on his only a second before, wrap around the golden-brown bottle and raise it to her lips. He couldn't help but watch her interestedly – the girlish, sweet way that her pinky stuck out ever-so-slightly from the grip around the Firewhiskey; the look in her eyes as they met his, seeming to twinkle in delight; the decisive nature with which she brought the bottle to her lips and looked to the ceiling, tilting her head back; the long swig she took, not at all cautious, but welcoming. And when she lowered the amber bottle and licked her lips clean of the drink before smirking, he felt the familiar desire cloud his senses.

xxx

James was right. It _was_ hot and cold all at the same time, and it did settle with warmth in the back of her throat, and she did feel slightly lightheaded and dizzy and happy – but she wasn't entirely sure if that was simply the work of the Firewhiskey. She rather thought that it had something to do with the way she could feel his eyes on her as she drank; she couldn't see him, as she purposefully looked away, but she knew. She plucked the bottle from her lips and set it on the table in front of her. Surely enough, she found his eyes to be on her and she half-grinned without thinking. Then she let out a single laugh, because everything _did_ seem to be sillier. She brought a fist to cover her mouth, but a permanent smile seemed to be plastered to her lips so she bit down on her knuckle to fight the desire to laugh more.

xxx

He felt a combination of numb and hypersensitive to everything around him, his pulse pounding in his ears. Her laugh was infectious, and had he not been concerned about covering it, missing it, he would have joined in. Instead, he mirrored the smile on Lily's face and reached for the bottle. He raised it in a silent salute before bringing it to his mouth, all too aware that her own lips had previously sampled the contents. He couldn't be sure if it was all in his head or not but he thought he tasted a faint hint of cinnamon mixed with the slightly bitter, fiery taste of Ogden's. He made quick work of taking a swig, feeling the immediate rush of cool and hot and warm as if it was swimming in his veins. He set down the bottle between them again and looked at her, raising an eyebrow as he grinned.

"Well?"

xxx

It wasn't like being drunk. She had experienced that, this past summer at Petunia's engagement soiree. She didn't have clouded judgment and there wasn't a dull ache-turn-to-numbness like there was with the Cabernet she drank that night. Maybe that would come later, after drinking many more swigs of the Firewhiskey. She felt giddy and girlish and giggly, her senses unusually alert. And as she looked at James Potter, with his legs bent and an arm draped across his knees while the other jumped to his hair, ruffling it once before falling across the seat of the chair behind him, a tidal wave washed over the rollercoaster in her stomach. She was fairly certain that the drink was only ten percent of the reason she was feeling this way.

"I guess I change my mind," she said, dropping her fist from her mouth and grabbing for the bottle. It was out of her reach, so she sat forward, tucking her knees underneath her and leaning an elbow on the table in front of them.

"About what?" he asked, confused for a moment.

"The question, of course," she answered quickly. She pulled the bottle towards her, bringing it to her lips for a quick sip. "I think I fancy Firewhiskey, now." She surveyed James carefully, extending the drink to him.

xxx

He reached for the bottle, wrapping his fingers around it just above Lily's. Their pinkies overlapped, and he could have sworn there was a pause before she released her hand. Once more, he felt the jolt in his hand; his pinky felt numb from where it had settled on hers. She was watching him, a smile creasing the corners of her lips ever so faintly. He tilted his head back and let the liquid fall down his throat in one quick motion. He was positive this time that he could taste the cinnamon. His mind wondered if she had been chewing gum or mints or if she maybe used cinnamon toothpaste. He set the bottle down and leaned forward, also resting his arms on the small table between them.

Her words danced in his brain, the sound of her voice bouncing through his cerebral cortex like a siren's song. Maybe the Firewhiskey was going to his head faster than usual, but he thought he recognized something different in the way she watched him.

"Is that so?" he heard himself mutter, his voice quieter than he expected.

xxx

His voice was disarming; a low rumble, a mere murmur. She was done for and she knew it. She had been done for the moment she asked the Firewhiskey or Butterbeer question, knowing he'd answer the former and knowing she'd say the latter; and she knew that she was toast when she said she'd never had it before, certain that he would somehow procure the liquid (though, she had to admit, it was a surprise to find this would occur a mere fifteen minutes after posing the question); and the second that liquid hit her lips and she felt hyper-aware of everything James did and said, she _knew_ she was a goner.

All she could do in that moment was nod. She subconsciously bit down on her lower lip, tasting the Firewhiskey, still. She felt like a fool: sitting and nodding and sucking on her lip for lack of anything better to do. But as she assessed the situation before her – the silence, the all-too-serious exchange of eye contact, the fluttering in her stomach – she found she could only laugh.

xxx

He wasn't sure why she was laughing, but it was good-natured and he joined in immediately. It seemed the only thing to do in that moment. She started to laugh harder, and he saw her eyes begin to water from the humor (whatever it was). Then she clutched her sides and literally crumpled to the floor, lying on her back and convulsing with laughter. His own laughter died down, the sound of her laugh sobering him up because he wanted to memorize the sound, hold onto it forever. He, too, settled onto the floor, and they lay parallel to one another. He turned his head to face Lily, who was struggling to catch her breath and running her hands over her face to wipe away the tears (which, he was pleased to note, was from laughter and happiness).

When she finally relaxed, a giggle only occasionally catching in her throat and threatening to overtake her again, she turned her head to face him. The remnants of laughter faded nicely into her face, a glow of contentment about her. And when she rolled onto her stomach, he noticed that the distance between their faces closed a few inches. He thought she must have realized this, too, for something new settled onto her face. It wasn't, he noticed, discomfort. His stomach flopped wearily at this.

"James," she said and his name never sounded better. "I think I _really_ fancy Firewhiskey."

Something in her voice told him she was not referring to the amber liquid that was on both of their breaths. And the way she reached a hand to his and simultaneously pulled herself closer to him confirmed this. And when her face was mere inches away and her hair, which smelled of sunflowers, ticked his cheek, he was beyond positive that it was not just the Firewhiskey she fancied.

"Do you?" he breathed, looking up at her and resisting the urge to completely close the gap between them.

"Mhmm," she answered. James could feel the vibrations from the sound. His pulse was beating loudly in his ear as she brought her face tantalizingly close to his. "I'm not drunk," she murmured, her lips so close to touching his when she said this that something caught in his throat. He could smell the Firewhiskey on her breath.

"Me either," he managed.

Her eyes settled on his and he felt her hands move up his arms, his shoulders, fingers settling at the base of his neck, in his hair. He shivered at this, and she smiled. He could feel her heart beating fast, matching his own, and before he could prepare himself or register what was happening, her mouth covered his. She tasted like cinnamon.

The kiss was slow and tentative at first, curious more than anything. And soon, like with everything else, they had found their pattern, their rhythm, the complementary actions. She found herself straddling his waist and his hands found the small of her back, pulling her closer against his body as their kiss deepened. Her fingers tangled in his hair and his tongue was no longer in her mouth when she decided to tilt his head and press her lips to his ear, her breath sending shivers throughout his body that were only magnified ten-fold when she nipped lightly at his earlobe. And soon he found himself sitting up, with Lily still on his lap, and her hands were at his sides, resting dangerously at his hips as she fingered the hem of his shirt absentmindedly. His own hands remained at her back and he was unwilling to move them, even as the kiss started to settle into a series of soft caresses until their lips were no longer mingling.

xxx

She was dizzy, lightheaded, intoxicated. It had nothing to do with the Firewhiskey, she knew.

He was dizzy, lightheaded, intoxicated. It had everything to do with Lily, he knew.

"I changed my mind," he said.

"About what?" she breathed, worried.

"I _really_ fancy cinnamon."

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><p><strong>an**: haven't written in ages. hope you enjoyed. reviews are lovely!


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